hockeygirl14

Can I just say that not every meal is going to be fantastic and everyone has different experiences. The OP said they had a bad experience and wanted to share...just like any restaurant on land! I can totally believe that they had a bad meal. The manager didnt handle the situation well. Not every single meal can be perfect even at the highest quality of restaurants. Carnival is allowed to make mistakes - no one is perfect! Every restaurant has good qualities and bad qualities - sometimes they will mess up. I think its crazy to think that the OP would troll and then have everyone try and make them validate who they are...if it upsets you that much, dont answer.

OP - sorry you had a bad experience but one in 25 makes for pretty good odds! Hope you enjoy your next steakhouse meal on a future cruise.

Has anyone been on it recently? I have read a couple reviews on CC on the ships page but none of them have been overly helpful. I am planning on booking a cruise on Feb 15 Eastern Caribbean. This will be my second cruise on carnival - usually I cruise on NCL but I cant beat the price. I have previously been on the Valor! What upgrades does the ship have?

I have cruised on both NCL and Carnival! I'll try to break down the major differences for you.

1) Dining: NCL - Freestyle dining is what NCL is famous for! Basically you have no dining times, and freedom to eat where and whenever you want. There's usually 2 main dining rooms - one will be fancier and the other much more casual. I just did the Getaway and there was a large, upscale dining room and two smaller more casual ones. Plus, there are usually 5 + additional dining rooms that cost money. I find that the upcharge restaurants have better food but the MDR is fine too if that's what you want. Room service is 24/7 but the buffet ends around 11, 11:30pm which kind of sucks if you are looking for something late. They do have a 24hr restaurant called Blue Lagoon on some ships, O'Sheehans on others... it has a limited menu after 11pm but the food is good! Overall, NCL dining is good - just different than Carnival.

2) NCL is more casual. While people still dress up for formal nights on Carnival, NCL tends to see more "resort casual" or business casual rather than formal. I don't really recall seeing any cocktail dresses per say - more like something you would wear to a wedding for the dress up or not nights.

3) Entertainment: I find the entertainment better on NCL to be honest. The shows are more "broadway" style and better done overall. They have a huge range of entertainment - from shows that are on broadway, to comedy, to piano bars and more. On the newer, bigger ships like Epic, Getaway and Breakaway you will find things like the Vodka bar, Grammy Experience, and more! Poolside, I would rank them about the same. There's always dancing and competitions on both. I will say Carnival has the leg up with the seaside theatre, something that NCL doesnt have. The big screen is in the atrium of NCL ships which kind of sucks!

Overall, I have had great cruises on NCL and a great one on Carnival. I am looking forward to going back to Carnival on my next cruise, but I love NCL! When it comes to crew and service they are around the same (but who doesnt get good service on a cruise ship, right?) I think if you have cruised Carnival NCL would be a good next choice. It's very different, but in a good way!

Hope this helps!

I too have cruised mainly carnival. I am confused as too all these restaurants everyone is naming. Are they all free or pay? I don't like to dress up, so I'm thinking stay away from the aft dining room?

On NCL, Cagneys, Moderno, Le Bistro, Teppanyaki, La Cuicina and Ocean Blue are all upcharge restaurants. The fees vary from 15-50 (I believe Ocean Blue is 50) but they are all quite good!

The dining room food is pretty good - I prefer carnivals MDR food to be honest but there are some really yummy items! We tend to eat in the more casual dining rooms - on getaway it was taste and savor. Can't remember the name of the one we ate at on Epic although I know it was the dressier one. Even so, we weren't dressed to the nines; I wore a nice sundress, my dad and brother wore khaki's and a button down shirt.

My favourite dessert is the raspberry creme brulee at cagneys! Eat there if you get a chance!!

Picking based on the ports, I would choose the Liberty's itinerary. I prefer to have 4 port days and I absolutely love all of those ports listed :) In St. Thomas I would suggest heading over to St. John if you've been to st. thomas before. Grand Turk is great - we did an excursion through carnival and it was on a catamaran! Also, San Juan is very different than most ports you will visit IMO. Good luck choosing !

When I was on the Pearl we had one pull down bed and a roll-away bed that was beside the other beds. Not sure if this is the case for all cabins though.

I've been cruising on NCL since before I turned 18.... here's my 2 cents.

- Before I turned 18 I still was able to drink with my parents. Flame all you want but in Canada our drinking age is lower and its normal, whatever. I never used my card to purchase it. My friend I was cruising with had her parents sign for beer and wine and she never had an issue with that. They pretty much just go with the flow. There's no drinking age in international waters just set by NCL. You'll find that they can drink on any islands no problem as well!

- Cruised when I was 20 and my mom signed the beer and wine for me. We had to give both of our passports to do it. I'm not sure if you can get permission from the GFs father / if they would even allow it but if you can it might be worth a shot.

- Turned 21 and still drink no problem. Holding my alcohol better than the at least 40 y/o man I saw attempt to drunkenly climb over his balcony railing (it happened as I was standing out on the waterfront). It's their choice if they want to drink so don't judge them for it, you're being rude.

Also just wanted to make the point that you can get equally as drunk from beer and wine as you can from hard liquor. Why the difference, I don't really know tbh but NCL is pretty lax - they never questioned me when I drank underage on board with my parents.

Having been on both, I would choose Getaway! While the Epic has a lot to do, the Getaway is layed out much better. I also like the kids pool area better on Getaway! I also think there is more to do on Getaway like the ropes courses and the bigger water park.

Epic is also great for kids - there isn't a shortage of things to do. Plus both ships feature Nickelodeon characters!

Hi all!

 

hockeygirl14 ~ I really enjoyed your review, thanks. I hope to go on Getaway too as I've been on Epic & Breakaway & liked them.

 

Do you know if those 1300 people ever caught up to the ship? What a pity if they didn't. It's been a tough winter for travel.

 

~ Jo ~ :)

I did notice a lot of people boarding in St Maarten, which was our first port! We never heard one way or another. the 1300 missing info came from Jorje when we went to the future cruise presentation at the end of the week! We just thought the ship was layed out REALLY well haha:eek:

Could you elaborate as to why it was so difficult? What were you charged? We're thinking of renting near the port, but it sounds like it may not be such a good idea. Thanks.

The first reason we were upset was initially when we dropped the cars off from Orlando because we were told there was a shuttle to the port. There was not and we had to take a taxi. That wasn't a huge deal, but the information given should be correct. However, on the way back, the taxi drivers at the port gave us a VERY hard time about going to that location. We had to take two taxis. My taxi driver was rude and charged us $25 for maybe a $12 cab ride. There isn't a flat rate to the port (or so we were told). My parents were in the other cab and got in an argument with the driver, but theirs only cost $12.00. This was just our experience with Budget and Avis. Maybe it would be different with another rental company. By the time everything was said and done it would have maybe taken 10 minutes longer had we gone to the airport. Maybe others have had a different, more positive experience but for us it just wasn't good.

I found the pool by the water slides was never busy and there were always plenty of chairs around it. It's right beside the kids pool so maybe thats why?

Did you purchase the day passes at the front desk of the Hilton? How much do the passes cost?

We purchased them ahead of time through the sales.nassau at hilton dot com e-mail address. I believe they were $50 pp plus tax. You can purchase them at the front desk, and I believe they are given out on a first come first serve basis. The hours are 9-5 but they are flexible (we were welcome to stay as long as we wanted) and you are given a wristband for the day.

Well the last day finally arrived and we were sad to get off the ship :( We walked off ourselves and were through customs by 9am.

We had an incredibly difficult time getting a taxi that would take us to the Avis that is downtown. The cab drivers were really rude...it was necessary. Next time we will rent from the airport to save us the trouble.

Overall, the cruise was great! If you have any questions, please ask me !! I have tons of knowledge. :cool:

Today was our last day of the cruise, and also our port day in Nassau! We didn't arrive until around 12 so I got room service for breakfast and watched us come into port from the balcony. We were in port with the Disney Dream, Carnival Sensation and Carnival Victory I believe. We purchased day passes from the Colonial Hilton! It's about a 10-15 minute walk from the port and a great place to spend the day!

The beach area is kind of small but there is a big pool area and lots of chairs. They were also playing the Canadian vs. USA game so we were happy to watch that and eat some food, which was delicious. We had $240 in food vouchers for 6 of us. Each of us ordered a meal, 2 drinks and we got a couple plates of fruits and nachos and we didn't spend all the money. We left the rest as a tip for our waitress! The resort is beautiful and had free wifi for your first day there so that was a plus for sure! Next time we are in Nassau we will definitely return. We left around 5pm so we could walk back into town and try and do some shopping. A lot of places were already closed so we headed back to the ship by 6 and headed to the balcony to watch sail away! It was so cool sailing away in the dark.

Tonight for dinner we went to Savor - I had chicken parm. It was good...nothing special!

The fireworks were also rescheduled for tonight. It was pretty cool to have them on a cruise ship! Im sure the ships around us appreciated the show as well haha. We finished off the night with some shopping and wandering around the ship and then headed back to our cabins to pack. We were walking off the ship with our luggage in the morning so we didnt have to rush to have everything out in the hallway.

Sorry for the delay in this review - I have been really busy with school and work.

Anyways, today it was our last sea day so I slept in a little then headed up to the pool deck for a couple of hours. After lunch, I went to the future cruise presentation and the international crew show! The presentation was really informative and I was glad to see Tortola on many ports :) After that, the international crew show was really good as well! It was great to see the crew having fun.

We decided to try out the ropes course today as well. It was really fun and kind of hard but not really if that makes sense. There are plenty of crew around to help you through the course and the weight limit is around 300lbs. I LOVE this feature of the ship :) We also tried to go mini-golfing today but there were no more clubs and it was super busy. We never did get to try it! :( Oh well. We also went to O'Sheehans for a snack and then did the trivia in the atrium. After that, it was pretty much time to get ready for dinner, so we did that and then headed down to Moderno.

Personally, it is my least favourite restaurant of all the ones we dined at. I am not a huge meat eater and I just find it "meh" compared to the rest. Thats generally the concencus with my family - maybe if you eat more meat you would like it better? My favourite part is the pineapple and also how I was able to get dessert from Cagneys!

I believe tonight was the Neon Glow Party! The weather was excellent and it was a really cool concept. It was different than the White Hot Party but still fun! Everyone was getting their faces painted and it was a lot busier than the other parties throughout the week. We checked that out for a bit and headed to bed - it was our last day in port tomorrow!

Our plans for St. Thomas were heavily discussed. This would be our fourth time on the island and we had already done Maegans Bay, Sapphire Beach, an island tour, and shopping, so we decided we would head over to St. John today. Initially, we looked at a catamaran excursion through the ship, but it was sold out.

We went on our own, which is really easy to do! We took a taxi to Red Hook and then got on the ferry there because it came more frequently. When we got there, we decided on Trunk Bay (it was suggested to us by the cab drivers at the port) and we headed on our way. Our driver stopped along the way to take some pictures and finally we reached the beach! It’s part of the national park, so it cost $4 pp to get in. I loved how it had these beautiful tree lined paths, clean bathrooms and also a shower station, plus a snack bar for water (which was reasonably priced!). We spent a couple of hours there and then headed back to St. Thomas to do a little bit of shopping.

I don’t think I bought anything in St. Thomas. We headed back to the ship to grab food and watch the runners from the balcony! I believe I took a quick shower and nap before we headed off to O’Sheehans for dinner because they had all you can eat ribs. While I did not have the ribs, my family agreed that they were pretty good!

We also had Legally Blonde the Musical this night! I didn’t know what to expect from it…one because its one of my favourite movies but also because I figured it would be shortened from the Broadway version and sometimes that doesn’t work out! I was actually pleasantly surprised. It was funny, and just the right length! It was easy to follow and overall entertaining.

After this, I think we played a couple games in O’Sheehans and the arcade and headed to bed. We wanted to take full advantage of the ship for our next sea day!!

My pictures dont seem to be working in this link so I will try and post them in the next post.

I also noticed the smokey smell. I was kind of surprised that it was that strong considering its a new ship. Thanks for the review!

So I forgot to post day 3 earlier. This was kind of a boring day - I sat up on the pool deck most of the day so not much to report.

Another sea day…hooray!! I don’t really care for having 3 sea days in week long cruise, but on this ship there was no shortage of things to do! Today, I slept in again and made my way up to the pool deck to the same spot. We had this spot all week! I started to burn a little so I made my way back to the room for lunch and ordered room service. I got a chicken ceasar salad. They said 45 mins to an hour but I’d say mine came in about 25. It was pretty yummy and there was a lot of food!

I had a nap after this and woke up in time to get ready for CAGNEYS!! YUM. Again, a delicious meal! I noticed that they had added a new burger since the last time I went, so I decided to try it. I started with the baked potato soup and ceasar salad (a trend for this trip). They were just as good as I remembered! Next, I had the burger, which came with an arugula salad, and onion rings, plus whatever I wanted on it. I chose gorgonzola cheese sauce, carmalized red onions and bacon. It also had THE BEST PICKLES EVER on the side! They were sliced kosher pickles..mmm… I also ordered a side of Cagney fries, which were also just as delicious as I remembered! Lastly, for dessert, I had my favourite thing ever, the Raspberry crème brulee!

I don’t seem to have anything memorable from my notes today – I don’t think I did much to be perfectly honest. We tried out some gelato and it was delicious!! I think I did more of figuring out exactly where I was – I don’t think I had it figured out by the end to be perfectly honest. It was sooo big. I liked that I didn’t have to walk through the casino to get places though. We were at Cagney’s for a really long time – I think we finished around 10:30. I went to bed around midnight because I was excited for our port day ahead!!!!

Just curious, what happened on day three? or did I miss the review?

Woops, got a little excited haha I will post Day 3 now!

Today was our St. Maarten day. We didn’t have much of a plan – we just walked off the ship ourselves and headed over to Maho beach since we missed it last time! We got a taxi no problem and found ourselves there around 10:30. There was a big board with the upcoming flights and we were excited that there was a big KLM plane coming in, so we decided to stick around until 12:20 when it was supposed to land. The beach isn’t anything special – its steep and extremely crowded, granted we didn’t go there to relax on the beach… I didn’t even get in the water! Anyways we must have seen like 10 or so planes and finally it was 12:20…then 12:30…and 12:40 and the KLM flight was late. We grabbed a taxi and just as we did that it landed. It was cool to see on the opposite side of the runway though!

After the beach, we decided to head over to the downtown area to do some shopping. We visited Marigot last year so we wanted to check out the dutch side! I thought it was a lot more commercial and had a different vibe than the French side. Personally, I prefer the French side to the Dutch but it’s nice overall. Our port day was very long today, 8-6pm. Once we got out of the taxi, we went to grab something to eat. We ended up at this place called Vanilla and Chocolate. They had crepes, sandwiches, ice cream, and free wifi (a bonus!!). After that, we walked around a little more and eventually headed back to the ship. It’s a pretty quick walk, and luckily it had rained a little so it wasn’t TOO hot compared to earlier in the day.

One thing I didn’t really like/understand was paying 50 cents to use the washroom that was absolutely disgusting. It’s not even the cost, I mean its 50 cents but just why? Especially since we had to go and ask for toilet paper to the lady stationed at the entrance and also had to get paper towel & she was accepting tips. I know they are making money from it, its just something I don’t quite understand.

Tonight, we ate dinner in Taste. I believe I had a salad, and the spaghetti Bolognese. I thought it was good; nothing special though. I find that NCL’s main dining room food always tends to be just okay for me. I had this red velvet chocolate mousse for dessert which was pretty good! It wasn’t too sweet which was good for me.

There were also supposed to be fireworks tonight but it was raining pretty hard so they got rescheduled to later on in the cruise. The 80s party was moved inside to the atrium. When I checked it out, it wasn’t too busy, my guess being that people didn’t really want to party in the atrium and also that we had another port day tomorrow. It was off to bed for me because we had a busy day planned for St Thomas!!

Great review so far.

 

Keep it coming....lol...I know how much time it takes to put it together, so we'll be patient.

 

I do have a question. ?.....do the 3 free dining rooms have different menus on the same night? On the dalies that were posted, it lists the Tropicana restaurant separately from the other 2.

 

 

Thanks for posting.

Howard

Taste and Savor had the same menu just in a different order, Tropicana Room's menu was different but still had similar components!

After sail away, I think we might have explored the ship and then got ready for dinner! Tonight, we had La Cuicina (which may have been my favourite meal on board!)

Our reservations were at 8pm and we were seated promptly. The restaurant was kind of empty but I assume it was just because it was the first night – the rest of the week it was always busy. Having dined at La Cucina on the Epic, I knew what to expect on the menu and had to decide between the chicken parm, or the beef lasagna. I chose the lasagna, and it was a good choice! We even tried the Bolognese pizza, recommended by our waiter, Genevive (who was EXCELLENT!!!), and had a lovely meal! I had the chocolate tart for dinner, again it was pretty good.

We walked around the ship some more and headed to bed kind of early.

The next day was our first sea day! We got up early to get chairs and managed to get a pretty good spot in between pools on deck 16. There was no problem getting chairs all week and I didn’t notice many “chair hogs” – most people were in their chairs or they were vacant. Today was kind of lazy – woke up late and missed breakfast but managed to hit the buffet for lunch. I didn’t see too much that I wanted so I ended up at O’Sheehans and got mozza sticks and chicken fingers! We ate at O’Sheehans a lot this week, LOL.

I noted that it was Seafood night at the buffet – we didn’t go because we have TEPPANYAKI tonight!!

Teppanyaki was excellent! I had the Chicken Yakuidon. I am not a huge Asian-food lover but this meal was delicious and our chef was hilarious!!

After dinner, we headed to the Getaway theatre for Burn the Floor! I wasn’t sure what to expect, but I ended up enjoying it! It definitely adds to the Miami theme of the ship – it’s a latin dancing show (without giving too much away).

After the show, we explored the ship some more – walked around the Waterfront and checked out the 70s party that was going on at Spice! It looked fun, I personally didn’t stay too long but others in our party did and had a great time! The nightly parties were always busy and seemed like a lot of fun. We also went down to check out Bliss but it wasn’t too busy yet – it was around midnight. I’m not sure if it was like that all week or just that night, didn’t really bother going back because we were too tired…(how boring). Anyways, we turned in not too long after to get ready for our next day at sea!!

I'm still trying to get my pictures to upload :confused: it won't show my most recent uploads when I try to upload onto photo sites. Weird. Anyways I'll post some more tonight :)